Minnesota, thank you.  I mean it...THANK YOU! 
I have to say it again...THANK YOU!
Why am I thanking you?  Well, I did attend college within your borders for five years.  No, Minnesota, I wasn't stupid but I just chose a career track that took me five years to complete.  After, college graduation, I continued to live within your borders for three years.  8 years of my life, Minnesota, were devoted to you.  I enjoyed your 10,000 lakes although the validity of calling some of those bodies of water needs to be called into question but they still provided me with much entertainment.  Fishing in Sleepy Eye outside the nun's retirement while drinking Pig's Eye Pilsner(one of your own brews, Minnesota!) and catching my daily bass limit in 30 minutes.  That was what summer was all about.  Then the time I cleansed myself in the healing waters of Lake Minnetonka...damn, Minnesota, you are so awesome!
Minnesota, you have given us some of the best music known to man...Bob Dylan...Prince...The Replacements...Husker Du...Morris Day and the Time...Dillinger Four...The Jayhawks...Brother Ali...Atmosphere...The Hold Steady...Soul Asylum...Marcy Playground...Semisonic...that song Funkytown by Lipps Inc, yes, that is totally about how your disco scene sucked and a guy from St. Paul wanted to get disco into your nightclubs.  You did right, Minnesota.  Screw disco!  I love the genre of music that has come to be known as "Minneapolis Sound".
Minnesota you also are quite arty.  I love your Walker Art Center and the Science Museum and that whole uptown district was quite arty and then I wound up in that cemetery and found Carl Pohlad's mausoleum which is bigger than any house in which I have resided.  Carl Pohlad died this week, Minnesota.  That is sad.  He bought the Twins and his acquisitions brought two World Series titles and two of my favorite childhood players, Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek.  Sports haven't been your strong suit lately.  The Timberpups aren't as fierce as they were with KG and Sam Cassell.  Maybe Kevin McHale can lead them to a return to...the playoffs?  The Vi-queens, Minnesota, the Vi-queens!  Did people within your borders even get to see that playoff game?  I have so many thoughts on how they could return to glory but that would mean the residents of your state need to back their team and also we need to get rid of the Metro-dump. 
Minnesota, overall, I love you.  Mankato with it's domed environment controlled by the underground hot springs...ok, that was a hoax perpetrated by a professor at one of your state colleges but it did give a boost to tourism because people were dumb enough to believe everything they read on the internet.  New Ulm...POLKA CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!!!  Need I say more?  OK, Schell's Brewery...Herman the German...the Pamida parking lot and the epic arctic cat/polaris battles of 2001?  Walnut Grove, I couldn't believe it actually existed.  I just had to follow the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway and there it was.  I blinked so I had to turn around but it was there Minnesota.  Austin, home of Spam...not the annoying email but the tasty meat treat.  They even have a museum and it was the childhood home of the NFL's best broadcaster and poster boy for videogame football, John Madden.  Then there was New Prague...not pronounced like the city in the Czech Republic but Pray-guh.  They had polka fests and the Catholic church there used a polka band to play the music for it's Masses. 
Why am I buttering you up, Minnesota?  It all boils down to this statement.

OK, I'm not a political mastermind and I don't claim to be but..C'MON!  Al Franken?
I look back at your recent history of politics and realize that the election of Al Franken to a senate seat is fitting.  You elect a comedian and that makes you, Minnesota, a joke unto yourself. 
It didn't start with Al Franken.  It started that fateful day in 1998.  I was sitting in my dorm room being a studious student.  I think I had a music test the next day and I knew nothing about that class.  My roommate rushes in and asks, "Did you vote?"  I said no and that it was just a Minnesota election so it didn't really matter to me.  He replied, "But you could have voted for a wrestler!"  Yes, the Body or should I say The Mind. 

I'm surprised I could dig up Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial inauguration photo.  Minnesota, I'm sorry I didn't vote for the other guy.  I saw news reports later on that showed that the county where my school was located voted heavily for Jesse.  I'm sorry.  I think my college is to blame.  Later on that evening when the results were coming in all my classmates that I thought for the most part were rational, sentient human beings, were running around screaming, "HE WON!  THE BODY WON!"  An entire floor in the dorm went to vote just so the could vote for Ventura. 
I can't remember any of his policies.  Did he actually have any?  All I remember was that he offended everyone in that burly wrestler monotone voice.  He offended Christians by saying in an interview with Playboy magazine that Christianity was still an opiate for the masses.  That day the article was released, October 5th 1999, Minnesota, you had a blizzard.  I only remember that date because that was teh day I got my eyebrow pierced.  I had to drive back to campus in blinding snow.  Not blinding because of the piercing but because the snow was so heavy, what was it, four or five inches in a little over an hour?  He also offended the Irish by saying that the Irish city planners of St. Paul were all drunks because of how the streets were laid out.  Minnesota, St. Paul does have some horrible driving but I don't think a wrestler should be saying that drunk Irishmen were to blame.
Then Jesse didn't want to play governor anymore and you elected Governor Tim.  I liked him.  I honestly enjoyed Governor Tim but then he did the unthinkable.  The governor grew a mullet.

A mullet!  How is that respectable?  I think that mullet kept him from being made vice president.  It was all planned out, Minnesota.  The convention was in your state at the X-Cel Arena or whatever it's called these days and Governor Tim was supposed to be made the vice president candidate because he was such good friends with John McCain.  We heard how almost every weekend, McCain was visiting your state and going hunting and fishing with Governor Tim.  Then John McCain did the unthinkable and called out of left field the governor of Alaska.

Sarah Freakin Palin.  I won't go into how she cost McCain the election because it wasn't solely her fault.  Maybe John was just trying to win over the women spurned by Barack Obama's nomination.  Who knows?  Oh and I won't go into how with the religious right supporting the Republican party, we will never see a Republican woman in the White House or the catbird seat of vice president.  Oh...Minnesota, you also gave us Sinclair Lewis...THANK YOU!
Governor Tim spurned...cut his mullet and has taken all his frustrations out on the smokers.  Minnesota, if you have time, check my back pages for a parody song called Minnesota Uber Alles.
Yesterday, Minnesota, you gave me the news that Al Freakin' Franken was claiming victory in the Senate race against Norm Coleman.  Well I have said all along that Norm Coleman deserved to lose because he never fulfilled his campaign promise to myself, The Croatian Sensation, Oaf, The Beermaker, and Skinny Wolf.  See, Norm said that because a Vote for Norm sign was displayed at Minnesota's White House, the best damned White House in the state of Minnesota, he would furnish one of our parties with a couple kegs of Minnesota's finest brew, Schell's.  Did Norm follow through?  No!  But I don't think he deserved to lose to this:

Al Franken...Minnesota, I hope you know what you're doing.  I am all talked out here.  I just don't know where to go.  In the future, Minnesota, please be more serious about politics...wait, maybe that should be something all America should think about.


Well Ann Coulter is a douche bag in the highest form but Al Franken...C'MON!